More Comic Writing; and More Writing

Today is, as most Wednesdays, my writing day.

I've spent a good chunk of my free time (2 or 3 hours I'd guess) continuing with the second issue of the Castle Marrach comic book. I got another six pages done, including two scenes that I really liked in my outlines, and I think they all came out well.

I've been making slow progress on the comic. Three pages the first Wednesday, two pages the second, another six pages today. This actually isn't because the writing has been hard. Quite the contrary, scripting this comic has been some of the easiest writing I've ever done. Putting together the outline for it took a bit of work, shifting everything around in my brain, but since then everything has just flowed.

If I wanted I could could probably have drafted the whole issue in 8 or 10 hours of continuous writing. I've been reluctant, and instead break after writing a couple of pages, but that's ironically because the writing is so easy, not because it's hard.

You see, I quite liked my script for the first issue of the Castle Marrach comic. It looked good when I was writing it and when I finished it. A year later I thought it was a little derivative of Neil Gaiman's writing style, but after the talented Bob Cram Jr. penciled and inked the script I fell in love with it again. Now, I'm wanting to make sure I hold up to that same standard.

So, I'm purposefully taking it slow. As long as the writing feels like it's really fresh I've continued on, but if I have the least hesitation I've stopped, to continue on another day. Today I'd originally stopped after the first two pages, but then the start of the next two page spread was dancing in my head and I had to continue on. I stopped again after that, but the next two pages broke free too. And so I was up to six.

I can already see the start of the next two page spread too. ( Minor Spoiler for Issue #2, I suppose )

But one must stop somewhere.

And that'll give me something to look forward to writing next week.

(Though I've cheated; I can now come back here and have the start of my next two pages if I want, since I've committed it to electronic memory. Though I now note it'll need a caption at the start of the first panel to help transition from the previous two page spread.)

Edit: And I couldn't help it. The rest of that spread just kept coming to me until I wrote it down. And then I wrote the start of the next scene (which I still need to finish) and all of the scene after that, bringing me to ten pages for the day, and just five left on the comic.

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After two months of idleness, I've clearly got my writing day going again. However to a certain extent it's still not fulfilling its original ideal.

Part of the idea of a writing day was to get a break from the grind of keeping everything running at Skotos, and to have some fun. To that extent it's succeeded.

However, my writing day also came about after I took a steep cut in pay at Skotos. Afterward I didn't really have enough money budgeted to make ends meet, and so I needed an opportunity to earn some additional money, and freelance writing seemed like a good solution.

Last year I did write an article for an MMORPG game design book. It was published in March or April and will theoretically start paying out royalties in three months or so. I'm hoping there will be another of those books that year, because that's an easy type of writing to segue into, because the genre is so close to Skotos'. Chris is looking into a paid blog on gaming which might be another good option (though it's apparently paid by ads, and my experience at RPGnet says that might not be worthwhile).

However beyond that, I really need to expand more, to find some more paid freelance writing that I can do. If it's close in genre to Skotos, great, because then I can feel good about some opportunity for cross-promotion. But if it's not, I need to be more comfortable with that, because the whole initial reasoning was about $$$, not just Skotos.

I do have an elf book in the wings. I need to keep pushing on that, though the payment possibility is a bit more nebulous since it's in the RPG industry.

Ideal for me would be if these comic scripts could somehow turn into cash, either by someone picking them up, or by getting a contract to do other writing based on their strength. I really need to get pushing on that.

Great EndGaming

Had a great night of EndGaming tonight. I went really prepared to have some fun and play some great games that I really enjoyed, and I did.

It started out with christophera_ giving me a ride there, always a nice touch. I ended up gaming with him all evening, and he was incredibly accomodating in playing the games I was interested in because he knew things have been tough lately.

Turn out was surprisingly low at the start of the evening, and thus Chris and I were sitting around for a bit. I finally pulled out Fredericus which Mayfair sent me a review copy of a few weeks ago. It's a very clever little tactical game where you constantly move around cards and pieces to score points. Unfortunately the first time we played, last Thursday, it got really degenerative toward the end of the game and we spent the last several rounds spinning our wheels, making bets that nothing would happen, and waiting for the game to end.

This time, same deal. Very disappointing, and it unfortunately has to go back on the review shelf because I still don't know if there's a good endgame experience. We actually didn't finish the game because it was obvious we were going to spin for a long time with nothing happening.

Things picked up from there.

Second game was Basari, a simultaneous decision & strict negotiation game that I've been wanting to replay for a while. We did, and now I'm even more enthusiatic to German variant game Edel, Stein & Reich (which is sitting on my play table).

Next up was Tigris & Euphrates which I've been really enjoying since I got it in trade. I was benefitted a lot in this game by the person to my left being overly aggressive, which is a good thing for me because I usually don't end up being aggressive enough. That and a clever internal conflict to steal a monument I really needed did me well (though I didn't quite pull out a win).

Quo Vadis? was game #4. This was my second game of this, which is another one that had been sitting in my review pile waiting for another play. It's another interesting & quick negotiation game and I liked it even more this time, when I felt like I knew what I was doing more. Of course, I totally didn't because I got creamed.

Last game of the night was Web of Power. I've been playing the newer version of this majority control game, China, more recently, but I enjoy playing the original too, because of the theming. We had a bit of trouble getting started because we couldn't remember how many face-up cards you were supposed to have to draw from because it's different in the two games. We finally decided that the answer was two. Nope. Turns out that Web of Power is 3 and China is 4. Ah well. I lost this one due to insufficient advisor count.

I had a really good time despite losing everything. I would have won the Fredericus is we'd finished it, but I came in second in the Basari, a very, very near second in the Tigris & Euphrates (I think my count was 12/9/6/6 to the winning 10/10/6/6), a far last place finish in Quo Vadis?, and third of five in the Web of Power.

Other players were Chris, Bob, Mike A., Mike D. (collect the whole set!), Tom, Nathan, Eric V., and Dave G.

And tomorrow is Wallenstein. I must reread the rules.